Along with dozens of other impulse-purchases thanks (or no thanks) to the recent Christmas sale on Steam, we decided to get our hands on the entire GTA IV collection for about £6 in December, which right now has ended up being one of the best decisions we made last year. Why? The GTA IV video editor, that’s why! Next stop, Hollywood.
Basically, we find running each other over/jumping from atop a bridge onto each others’ cars in Grand Theft Auto IV far too entertaining. Seeing that amazing NaturalMotion ragdoll engine at work when characters are hit by cars or blown away by a rocket basically makes our day. So after seeing one of the most amazing Machinima videos ever, ‘The Brothers Mario’, on YouTube, we decided we wanted to try our hand at video production in GTA IV ourselves…
What has come about from it so far is a bloody ridiculous amount of stupid, idiotic, childish, immature, but ultimately hilarious scenes that we’ve managed to chop together to make a bunch of laugh-out-loud worthy (at least for us!) videos of us being the opposite of genius in GTA IV. So many of the funniest moments were entirely random events that we hadn’t actually planned out, and for that reason, the comedy value was even higher.
I played as an FBI-type fellow, and Matt as a gimp/burglar chap.
I want to talk about Cloudpunk, a game where you get to be a flying-car delivery driver in a futuristic cyberpunk city. Its world is an incredible achievement of environmental design, and while the gameplay itself may be basic, the city of Nivalis is a thing of beauty to behold. Nivalis is built out of hundreds of hand-modelled cuboid buildings; there’s nothing procedural about it. Apparently it took 3 years for the devs to design the city, and it really shows.
I do love me some quality pixel art, and it doesn’t get much better than this. Cast n Chill is a cozy side-scrolling fishing game by small indie dev team Wombat Brawler, with absolutely gorgeous visuals. It’s simple to play, and you you can dip in and out of it at your leisure, making it a fine addition to our collection of coffee break games.
Is bingeing bad for us? It seems an obvious question, but I have been thinking about it lately, while revisiting Lost, the tv show that started 22 years ago (cripes, I feel old). Back when it was airing, my friends and I watched it religiously every week, talked about it in great detail, eagerly awaiting the next episode. It was the definitive show of its time, sparking debates and endless theories. It felt great to be a part of that, the sense of all experiencing the same thing together over a long period of time – most seasons had over 20 episodes, which is way more than most shows get these days – and they aired one by one, every week for several months. In today’s age of bingeing a show from beginning to end, I wonder what we are missing by not taking our time.
I don’t know many people who played Quantum Break, and nobody ever talks about it anymore, so it must have been rather forgettable for those who did. Even as I write this, two days after blasting my way to the end-credits of the 2016 bombastic time-travelling action romp, I am struggling to remember some of […]
I do love me some quality pixel art, and it doesn’t get much better than this. Cast n Chill is a cozy side-scrolling fishing game by small indie dev team Wombat Brawler, with absolutely gorgeous visuals. It’s simple to play, and you you can dip in and out of it at your leisure, making it a fine addition to our collection of coffee break games.
Hades is a great example of a coffee break game. You can play through a single run within 30 minutes, but if something comes up and you have to stop mid-run you can save and quit in whatever room you’re in and continue later. As the father of a toddler, I find this particularly appealing these days. I like to squeeze in a quick game during my baby girl’s nap time, and since I never know exactly how long she’s going to sleep for, I need games that can be played in short bursts. I’m starting this new mini-feature series with Hades, because you’re almost always guaranteed to have a good time, no matter how long you play for.
